One Minute Reflection – 1 May – Friday of the Third Week of Easter, Readings: Acts 9:1-20, Psalm 117:1-2, John 6:52-59 and the Memorial of St Peregine Laziosi OSM (1260-1345)
“For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.” … John 6:55
REFLECTION – “Beloved brethren, quench your thirst at the waters of that divine spring we want to tell you about, quench it but don’t extinguish it, drink but don’t become satisfied. The living spring, the source of life calls us and says: “Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink” (Jn 7:37). Understand what it is you are drinking. Let the prophet tell you and let the source itself tell you: “Listen to the word of the Lord, they have forsaken me the source of living water” (Jer 2:13). So the Lord our God Himself, Jesus Christ, is He who is that source of life and that is why He invites us, to come to Him so that we might drink Him. Whoever loves Him, drinks Him, whoever feeds on the Word of God, drinks Him. … Drink, therefore, from this source that others have forsaken.
That we might eat of this bread and drink from this spring (…) He refers to Himself as “the living bread that gives life to the world” (cf. Jn 6:51) which we are to eat. … See from where this spring flows! see from where this bread comes down! For one and the same Person is both Bread and Spring, the Only-begotten Son, our God, Christ the Lord, for whom we should ceaselessly hunger.
It is our love that gives Him as food to us, our desire that makes us eat Him and when we have been satisfied, we desire Him still. Let us go to Him as to a fountain and drink of Him in our overflowing love, let us drink Him always with ever-new desire, finding our joy in the sweetness of His love. The Lord is gentle and good. We eat and drink Him without ceasing to hunger and thirst for Him, for we cannot exhaust this food and drink. We eat of this bread yet do not run out of it, we drink at this spring yet it does not run dry. This bread is eternal, this stream flows without end.” … St Columbanus (563-615) – Spiritual instructions 12, 2, 3
PRAYER – Almighty God, You sent Your Son and we have now come to know the grace of His Resurrection. Through Him we live and move and have our being. As we follow Him, He walks with us and leads us to You. Grant we pray, that His mother and ours, may guide our way to Him and may the prayers of St Peregrine, who followed closely behind the Lord, be a solace in our trials. Through Christ our Lord, with the Holy Spirit, God now and forever, amen.
AnaStpaul 